Settling an Old Score
Autorzy
Delores Fossen
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15,5K
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18
Chapter One
The sound woke Texas Ranger Eli Slater. Something, or someone, was on his front porch.
He’d heard footsteps, maybe. Or maybe it was just some animal on a nighttime prowl. Since he lived in the country, something like that was always a possibility.
When he heard another sound, he checked the clock on the nightstand. It was just after midnight. And he cursed because there was no way he would get back to sleep unless he made sure this wasn’t a would-be burglar. If that was the case, it’d be a stupid one since the fool was at the house of a Texas Ranger. A heavily armed and grouchy Ranger, since Eli had just finished a long shift only a couple of hours earlier.
He threw back the covers and first glanced at his phone to make sure that he hadn’t missed a text from his family. He had three brothers, and since all of them were lawmen, there was a chance that there could be some kind of emergency. But there were no texts or missed calls.
That put a knot in his stomach.
He was glad there was no family crisis, but that could have been a reasonable explanation for why someone was visiting him at this god-awful hour. So, if it wasn’t family, then who was it?
He cursed again when he heard the sound for the third time. Definitely footsteps, and not those of an animal. Eli dragged on his jeans, slipped his phone into his pocket and grabbed the SIG Sauer he kept next to his bed. He hoped this would be a quick check that would turn out to be nothing. Maybe a neighbor with car trouble. Then he could deal with it, get right back in bed and hope that he didn’t dream about...anything.
Especially her.
But hoping hadn’t ever helped him much in that department. She made regular appearances in his nightmares. That was his punishment, he supposed. A woman was dead because of him, and Eli figured even a couple of lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to help him come to terms with that.
“Who’s out there?” Eli shouted when he made it to the living room.
The footsteps on the porch came again, and this time the person was running. Maybe that meant this was possibly some kind of prank from local teenagers.
Since it was July, school was out, and his ranch was just a stone’s throw off the road leading into town. It could be that some kids had too much time on their hands. If so, Eli was in an ornery enough mood to arrest their sorry butts for waking him up. Then he’d take them into Longview Ridge to the sheriff’s office where his brother, the sheriff, could put them in jail for a few hours.
“Just in case you’re too stupid not to know this—I’m Sergeant Eli Slater, Texas Ranger,” he added.
No more footsteps, but he did hear something else. A strange mewing sound. Maybe a kitten? Oh, man. Had the pranking clowns left a stray cat on his porch?
Eli went to the door, keeping to the side of it while he opened it, and he peered out into the darkness. Nothing. Until he looked down.
What the hell?
It was a car seat, and there was a thin blanket draped over it. At first glimpse Eli thought maybe the cat was inside it, but then the blanket moved, and he saw the foot.
A baby’s foot.
That put his heart right in his throat, and he fired glances all around the yard to see who’d done this. No one was in sight.
The baby whimpered, kicking at the blanket, and while Eli still kept watch of the yard, he stooped down for a better look. That look got a whole lot easier for him when the baby’s kicking caused the blanket to slide off the car seat.
Yeah, it was a baby all right, and not some automated doll as he’d hoped.
A baby dressed in a pink gown. He wasn’t an expert on kids by any means, but he thought that maybe the baby was a couple of months old. And he or she wasn’t very happy, with that bottom lip poked out, and staring up at him as if about to start crying at any second.
“If this is a joke, I don’t find it funny,” Eli called out to the person who’d left the baby.
But a joke didn’t feel right. This went well beyond something that bored kids would do. Had someone actually abandoned the baby on his porch? His place wasn’t a “safe haven” for leaving unwanted infants; that was usually reserved for fire stations and police departments. But it could have happened.
Still keeping watch in case someone was out there, Eli checked to make sure the little one was okay. There wasn’t a scratch on the baby that he could see, and he or she appeared to be clean. That was something, at least. And whoever had left the baby had tucked a bottle into the side of the seat. So someone had been feeding the kid.
“Who did this?” Eli shouted, trying again to get some kind of response from the person responsible for the baby.
But nothing. Well, nothing other than the baby, who started to whimper. Hell. That caused the adrenaline to spike through him, and while he took out his phone, he rocked the car seat a little, hoping it would soothe the child. It didn’t. The whimpering turned into a full-fledged cry.
He scrolled through his contacts to his brother Kellan, the sheriff, but before Eli could even press the number, he saw a slash of headlights as a vehicle turned off the main road and started toward his place.
Fast.
The car sped right at him, skidding to a stop in front of his house. His first thought was this was someone who was about to clear up the situation. Maybe someone frantic. A blond-haired woman wearing a gauzy white dress bolted from the car. She was armed, and she aimed the gun that she whipped up right at him.
And he groaned.
Because he knew his visitor—Ashlyn Darrow. As a lawman, he’d made enemies, had dealt with his share of bad blood, and Ashlyn was at the top of the bad blood list. In her mind she thought he was the bad guy.
He wasn’t.
But Eli doubted he would convince her of that—ever. Especially after what’d happened.
Despite him trying to push it away, pieces of the repeating nightmare came. Ashlyn was in that nightmare, but like now she was very much alive. The other woman wasn’t.
“Get away from her,” Ashlyn ordered.
If Eli had had on his badge, he would have tapped it to give her a reminder that she didn’t need. Ashlyn knew full well that he was a Ranger, and she had no badge and no right, legal or otherwise, to pull a gun on him. Still, he had no intention of trading shots with her, not with the baby right at his feet. Just in case Ashlyn pulled the trigger, though, he moved in front of the little girl. He seriously doubted she would do something like that if she knew there was a baby involved.
“Put down your gun,” he warned her. “Along with pissing me off, you’re endangering a child.”
A burst of air left her mouth. It was a humorless laugh. “You’ve already endangered her. Just like you did Marta.”
There it came again. Bits of the nightmares, and it always sickened him that the pieces could be just as potent as the real thing. Two years hadn’t toned down the bits, either, and despite the bad blood between Ashlyn and him, Eli thought maybe it was the same for her.
Since talking about Marta Seaver wasn’t going to help this situation, Eli went with a question that would hopefully give him the start of the answers he needed. “Put down your gun and tell me what you know about this baby. Were you the one who left her here?”
Even though it was dark, there was enough light coming from the porch that he saw the confusion go through her eyes. Brown eyes, he knew. And he knew them well. Or rather had known them.
She shook her head, lowering her gun just a little, but then he saw another emotion. Pure anger. “You know how the baby got here, because you were the one to take her,” she insisted.
Now he was the one who was no doubt showing some confusion. “I was in bed asleep.” He tipped his head to his lack of shirt and boots. “I heard a noise, came to the porch to check it out, and she was here. A couple of minutes later, you showed up with a gun.”
Ashlyn stared at him, repeated the headshake, and she started moving closer. Eli didn’t think he was the reason for that, though. The baby started fussing.
“Is she hurt?” Ashlyn asked, her thick breath gusting.
“She seems fine to me, but I didn’t pick her up for a closer look. I was about to call Kellan, and then I would have taken her to the hospital just to be sure.”
If Ashlyn heard any of that, it didn’t register on her face. As the baby’s fussing got louder, Ashlyn moved faster. She practically barreled up the steps, and the moment that she reached him, Eli stripped the gun from her hand.
She made a strangled sound of fear and frustration, but she didn’t fight to get the weapon back. Instead, Ashlyn dropped to her knees and picked up the baby, pulling the infant right against her.
“She’s okay,” Ashlyn said, raw relief in her voice, and she just kept repeating it.
He’d known Ashlyn since they were kids, but it’d been two years since he’d seen her. Not since that night of Marta’s death and the shooting that’d nearly ended Ashlyn’s life, too. She hadn’t actually cried that night, had been more in shock and then too drugged up on the pain meds for her injuries. However, she was crying now, and the tears were streaming down her face.
Eli wasn’t immune to those tears, either. Ashlyn’s grief already felt like a fist around his heart, and that fist was squeezing hard now.
He tucked both of their guns in the back waist of his jeans and glanced out at her car to make sure no one else was inside. If there was, he didn’t see them.
“Whose baby is this? Is she yours?” he demanded, and he made sure his lawman’s tone came through loud and clear.
But his tone faltered a bit when he recalled something. Yet more memories of the attack two years ago. Ashlyn had been shot three times, and the bullets had done a lot of damage. Eli was pretty sure he remembered the doctors saying that she’d never be able to have a child.
An injury like that was something that only added to his nightmares. One woman was dead and the other wounded to the point that it had changed her life forever and taken away her chance to become a mother. A biological one, anyway.
“She’s mine. Her name is Cora, and I adopted her,” Ashlyn added as if she’d known he was thinking about the shooting.
Eli hadn’t heard about the adoption, but then Ashlyn wasn’t exactly a frequent visitor to Longview Ridge. Probably because she hadn’t wanted to risk running into him. By avoiding him, she’d also avoided the inevitable gossip that came with living in a small town.
“If you didn’t bring Cora here, then who did?” he asked.
Ashlyn still had tears in her eyes when she looked up at him. She opened her mouth, closed it and shook her head for a third time. She glanced away from him as if trying to figure out how to answer, and with the baby gripped in her arms, she quickly stood.
“Oh God,” she blurted out. “They could be watching us. They could still hurt her.”
That got his attention, and even though Eli still didn’t have all the answers he wanted, he hurried Ashlyn inside his house and shut the door. Eli immediately started to pat Ashlyn down, working his hands around the baby.
Ashlyn made a sound of outrage. One that Eli ignored.
“You showed up here out of the blue and pulled a gun on me,” he grumbled. “Just in case you’re carrying our bad blood to the next level, I don’t want you trying to kill me.”
She didn’t exactly jump to defend herself or claim that killing him had never been on her agenda. That didn’t ease the tight muscles in his chest.
“I would have done anything to get her back.” Ashlyn’s voice trembled as she kissed the baby again. But then she froze for a moment before she looked up at him. “And they knew that. Oh God. They knew that.”
“They?” Eli challenged. Once he was certain she wasn’t armed, he engaged the security system and looked out the side window of the front door.
“The men who took Cora.” Her breath shuddered, and she started to sob again.
Eli didn’t have a stone heart, so that got to him. So did the fact that an innocent little baby was somehow involved in this. Whatever this was.
“Keep talking,” he insisted while he continued to keep watch. Ashlyn had left on her car headlights so that helped him see the road that led to his house. “Tell me what happened.” And then he would almost certainly need to call Kellan. First, though, Eli wanted to hear the specifics so he’d know what to relay to his brother.
“I was in bed at my house. Cora was asleep in the nursery.” Ashlyn’s voice got shakier with each word. So did she. Whatever had happened had spooked her, and he was positive that she wasn’t faking it. “Two men broke down the door. Cops,” she spat out, aiming a glare at him. A glare that quickly softened as if she’d heard what she’d said and realized it didn’t ring true.
“Two cops broke into your house?” He didn’t bother to take out the skepticism. “Did they have a warrant? Did they ID themselves?”
Ashlyn shook her head. “They were wearing uniforms, badges and all the gear that cops have. They used a stun gun on me.” She rubbed her fingers along the side of her arm, and the trembling got worse. “They took Cora, but I heard them say they were working for you.”
Eli’s groan was even louder than she one she made. “And you believed them.” The look he gave her was as flat as his tone. He didn’t spell out to her that she’d been gullible, but he was certain Ashlyn had already picked up on that.
She squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “I panicked. Wasn’t thinking straight. As soon as I could move, I jumped in my car and drove straight here.”
The drive wouldn’t have taken that long since Ashlyn’s house was only about ten miles away. She lived on a small ranch on the other side of Longview Ridge that she’d inherited from her grandparents, and she made a living training and boarding horses.
“Did the kidnappers make a ransom demand?” he pressed. “Or did they take anything else from your place?”
“No. They only took Cora. Who brought her here?” Ashlyn asked, her head whipping up. “Was it those cops?”
“Fake cops,” Eli automatically corrected. “I didn’t see who left her on my porch, but they weren’t exactly quiet about it. She was probably out here no more than a minute or two before I went to the door and found her.”
He paused, worked through the pieces that she’d just given him, and it didn’t take him long to come to a conclusion. A bad one. These fake cops hadn’t hurt the child, hadn’t asked for money or taken anything, but they had let Ashlyn believe they worked for him. There had to be a good reason for that. Well, “good” in their minds, anyway.
“This was some kind of sick game?” she asked.
It was looking that way. A game designed to send her after him.
“They wanted me to kill you?” Ashlyn added a moment later.
Before Eli answered that, he wanted to talk to his brother and get backup so he could take Ashlyn and the baby into Longview Ridge. First to the hospital to confirm they were okay and then to the sheriff’s office so he could get an official statement from Ashlyn.
“You really had no part in this?” she pressed.
Eli huffed, not bothering to answer that. He took out his phone to make that call to Kellan, but he stopped when he saw the blur of motion on the other side of Ashlyn’s car. He lifted his hand to silence her when Ashlyn started to speak, and he kept looking.
Waiting.
Then, he finally saw it. Or rather he saw them. Two men wearing uniforms, and they had guns aimed right at the house.
